Texas Cinderella / The Texas CEO's Secret: Texas Cinderella / The Texas CEO's Secret

“You still don’t believe me?” Tate interpreted that part of the head shake.

“It doesn’t matter. This is how things go with you two. It stands to reason that you wouldn’t make it to the altar the first time around. There will probably be a couple of engagements and breakups before that will happen. But do I think it will eventually happen? Sure.”

Tate rolled his eyes. “This is tonight’s dinner all over again.”

So the subject that had made his family meal rough hadn’t been the Charlie issue, it had been Tate’s broken engagement…

“Your family didn’t take it seriously either?” Tanya asked.

“Only seriously enough to be annoyed. But I am serious—Katie and I are—”

“I know, broken up.”

“Once and for all.”

Why was there that part of her that wanted so much to buy the finality he was selling? To think that it was even a possibility that Tate McCord and Katie Whitcomb-Salgar could be no more for real? It shouldn’t have any impact on her at all, one way or another.

And yet it did. It raised a hope in her that was completely out of place. That shouldn’t have been there. That she didn’t want there. It made her feel as if she were walking a tightrope and had just discovered she didn’t have a safety net. It shook her.

And she suddenly felt the need to get out of there. To get some distance in which to gather her wits and regain some balance. Some distance that would take her where Tate wasn’t right there beside her, smelling so good, looking so good, and now not engaged…

“I think we’ve done enough here tonight,” she said, getting to her feet. “We’ve laid the groundwork. We can probably call it quits.”

She knew that had come out of the blue and the hastiness of it had obviously confused Tate. “We haven’t even talked about the present-day McCords—with the exception of Gabby,” he pointed out.

“I know about the present-day McCords,” Tanya said as she closed her notebook, clipped her pen to it and began to make a pile of the photographs she was taking. “Your mother looks after the household and family and does charity work. Blake is the CEO of McCord’s Jewelers. You’re a surgeon. There’s the twins, Penny and Paige—Penny is a jewelry designer, Paige is a geologist and gemologist. And there’s Charlie, who’s a student at Southern Methodist University and who we’ve also talked about tonight. Did I leave anyone out?”

“No, that’s the lot of us,” Tate confirmed, his tone still perplexed.

He stood then, too. And while Tanya hoped it was just a polite acknowledgment that she was about to leave, instead he said, “I’ll walk you back to your mother’s place.”

“That’s okay, you don’t have to,” she said, wishing it hadn’t sounded so panicky.

“I want to,” he assured her.

“Whatever,” Tanya said, trying for aloofness and failing as she picked up everything and held it in front of her like a schoolgirl carrying books. Carrying books close and tight and protectively.

“Did I tick you off somehow?” Tate asked as they headed for the path that wound away from the pool.

“No. I don’t know why you would think that.”

“Maybe because you’re acting as if I just grew fangs or something. Is my not being engaged scary to you?”

Terrifying. Although she wasn’t exactly sure why, except possibly that she was terrified that she might give in to that wave of elation that had washed through her when he’d told her his engagement was off and let down her guard with him.

But if she let down her guard, then what? She could end up just another person he occupied his time with while he was on one of his innumerable breaks from Katie Whitcomb-Salgar. And all Tanya could think was, Oh, no, not me.

She just wasn’t sure she could stick to it.

Although there was still the issue of her mother and her mother’s job, and the fact that Tate was her mother’s employer…

Reminding herself of that helped. It actually allowed her to begin to relax again.

Even if Tate wasn’t engaged any longer, there was still a good—a very good—reason why she absolutely couldn’t and wouldn’t let anything happen with him. Anything even like last night when she’d thought he might be on the verge of kissing her.

Then something else that seemed completely unlikely occurred to her and compelled her to say, “When did this particular breakup come about? I didn’t think Katie was even in Dallas.”

“We broke up about a week ago but she wanted to tell her parents before word got out and I agreed to that. She is in Florida with them. She called this morning to let me know our private gag order was lifted and I could tell whoever I wanted.”

So the engagement had been axed before Tate had found Tanya in the library on Friday night. It didn’t have anything to do with the fact that he might be entertaining some notion of diddling the help’s daughter.

Tanya was relieved that that hadn’t been the case. That she hadn’t had anything to do with this particular breakup. She was also glad that she hadn’t said anything along those lines that would have embarrassed her. She was a little embarrassed anyway that she’d even had such a thought. Which was probably—like her thoughts of him kissing her—nothing but some kind of flight of fancy that she wasn’t even sure why she was having.

And she should just stop it, she told herself. Stop the flights of fancy, stop thinking anything was going on between them. And while she was at it, stop thinking about him every minute of the day and night, the way she had been!

They’d reached her front door when Tate said, “We haven’t talked about tomorrow.”

“No, we haven’t,” Tanya answered glibly, slowly settling down and coming to grips with herself and his news.

“I have to make my rounds in the morning, but I’m free in the afternoon. I thought I’d give you a tour of the McCord contributions to the city and end with an evening under the stars.”

Tanya glanced up to the sky and then dropped her gaze to blue eyes that were watching her intently. “Isn’t that what we just had? An evening under the stars?”

“I have something a little bit different in mind. What do you say?”

“Is it all for my report?” she asked to make it clear that that was the only thing she would agree to.

“Every bit of it,” he assured without hesitation.

“Then okay.”

“You still haven’t answered my question about if my being un-engaged is somehow scary, though,” he said then, smiling slightly.

“No, you’re being un-engaged is not scary,” she said as if the question itself was silly.

“You honestly did just decide on the spur of the moment that it was time to stop working tonight?”

“Yes. Why would I care if you’re engaged or not?”

Okay, she’d been doing so well and then she’d gone and taken it too far by sounding defensive.

“I care,” he said quietly, pointedly, continuing to gaze into her eyes.

And then she felt rotten. If he had been anyone else and this had been any other situation, she wouldn’t have reacted the way she had to the revelation that he and the woman he’d intended to marry had ended things. She would have been more caring, more compassionate. She wouldn’t have thought about herself.

“I’m sorry,” she apologized. “I guess I was kind of callous. Even if you have had a lot of ups and downs in your relationship, that doesn’t mean that you wouldn’t be upset—”

“I’m not upset,” he said. “And I don’t mean to sound callous either, and maybe sometime I’ll tell you why this didn’t upset me, but what I do care about is that now I don’t have to pretend that I’m committed to something—or someone—I’m not committed to.”